By Hon. Henry Hyde (R-IL), U.S. House of Representatives

November-December 1996 – On September 19, Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) closed the House of Representatives floor debate on the override of President Clinton’s veto of the Partial Birth Abortion Ban. The following is excerpted from his speech.

Mr. Speaker: In his classic novel Crime and Punishment, Dostoyevsky has his murderous protagonist Raskolnikov complain that “Man can get used to anything, the beast!”

That we are even debating this issue – that we have to argue about the legality of an abortionist plunging a pair of scissors into the back of the neck of a tiny child whose trunk, arms, and legs have already been born, and then suctioning out his brains – only confirms Dostoyevsky’s harsh truth.

We were told in committee by an attending nurse that the little arms and legs stop flailing and suddenly stiffen as the scissors is plunged in. People who say “I feel your pain” can’t be referring to that little infant.

What kind of people have we become, that this “procedure” is even a matter for debate! Can’t we draw the line at torture? And if we can’t, what’s become of us? We are incensed at ethnic cleansing. How then can we tolerate infant cleansing?

There is no argument here about when a human life begins. The child who is destroyed is certainly alive, certainly human, and certainly brutally destroyed.

…The supporters of abortion-on-demand have exercised their capacity for self-deception by detaching themselves from any sympathy whatsoever for the unborn child –and in so doing they separate themselves from the instinct for justice that gave birth to our country.

…There is no moral, nor, for that matter, medical justification for this barbaric assault on a partially-born infant. Dr. Pamela Smith, Director of Medical Education in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Chicago’s Mt. Sinai Hospital testified to that.

The abortionist who is a principal perpetrator of these atrocities, Dr. Martin Haskell, has conceded that at least 80% of the partial-birth abortions he performs are entirely elective, and he admits to over 1,000 of the abortions.

While we are told about some extreme cases of malformed babies, (as though life is only for the privileged, the planned and the perfect), Dr. James McMahon listed nine such abortions he performed because the baby had a cleft lip.

Many other physicians, who care about both mother and the unborn child, have made it clear that this procedure is never a medical necessity, but merely a “convenience” for those who choose to abort late in pregnancy, when it becomes physically difficult to dismember the unborn child in the womb.

…In one of his memoirs, Dwight D. Eisenhower, wrote about he loss of 1.2 million lives in World War II. He said: “The loss of lives that might have otherwise been creatively lived – scars the mind of the civilized world.”

Mr. Speaker, our souls have been scarred by one-and-a-half million abortions in this country every year! Our souls have so much scar tissue there isn’t room for any more.

What do we mean by “human dignity” if we subject innocent children to brutal execution, when they are almost born?

We all hope and pray for “death and dignity” – what is “dignified” about a death caused by having a scissors stabbed into your neck so that your brains can be suctioned out?

We have had long and bitter debates in this House about “assault weapons” – those scissors and that suction machine are “assault weapons,” worse than an AK-47 – you might miss with an AK-47 – an abortionist never misses with his assault weapon.

It isn’t just the babies that are dying for the lethal sin of being unwanted. We are dying, and not from the darkness, but from the cold: the coldness of self-brutalization that chills our sensibilities and allows us to think that this unspeakable act is an act of “compassion.”

If you vote to uphold this veto – if you vote to maintain the legality of a “procedure” that is revolting to even the most hardened heart – then please don’t ever use the word “compassion” again.

…By upholding this tragic veto, you join the network of complicity in supporting what is essentially a crime against humanity – for that little almost born infant, struggling to live is a member of the human family. Partial Birth Abortion is a lethal assault against the very idea of human rights, and destroys, along with a defenseless little baby, the moral foundation of our democracy. Democracy isn’t after all, a mere process – it assigns fundamental values to each human being – the first of which is the unalienable right to life.

One of the great errors of modern politics is the unavailing attempt to separate our private consciences from our public acts. It can’t be done. At the end of the 20th century, is the crowning achievement of our democracy to treat the weak, the powerless, the unwanted as things to be disposed of? If so, we haven’t elevated justice – we have disgraced it.

This isn’t a debate about sectarian religious doctrine nor about policy options – this is a debate about our understanding of human dignity – what it means to be human. Our moment in history is marked by mortal conflict between a culture of death and a culture of life.

I am not in the least embarrassed to say that I believe that one day each of us will be called upon to render an account for what we have done, and what we have failed to do, in our lifetime. And while I believe in a merciful God, I would be terrified at the thought of having to explain, at the final judgment, why I stood unmoved while Herod’s slaughter of the innocents was being reenacted here in my own country.

This debate has been about an unspeakable horror. And while the details are graphic and grisly, it has been helpful for all of us to recognize the full brutality of what goes on in America’s abortuaries, day in and day out, week after week, year and year. We’re not talking about abstractions here. We are talking about life and death at their most elemental. And we ought to face the truth of what we oppose, or support, stripped of all euphemisms.

…Let their innocence appeal to what President Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”

Prove Raskolnikov wrong. This is something we will never get used to. Make it clear, once again, that there is justice for all – even for the most defenseless in this our land.